1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a flat type image displaying apparatus which has a pair of substrates (a face plate and a rear plate) constituting a display panel and in which spacers are provided between the substrates as an atmospheric pressure resistant member. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method of manufacturing the image displaying apparatus in which the rod-like or long and narrow plate-like longitudinal spacers are provided between the substrates constituting a pair of the substrates.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in a method of manufacturing an image displaying apparatus which has plural spacers for defining a distance between substrates constituting a pair of the substrates, a method disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-172097 (called the patent document 1) has been known as a process of assembling the spacers to the substrate. In the method disclosed in the patent document 1, a hand for clamping the spacer and positioning the clamped spacer on the substrate and a spacer pressing mechanism for pressing both ends of the spacer in the longitudinal direction respectively onto the substrate are used. More specifically, the spacer which was positioned on the substrate by using the hand is first pressed onto the substrate by using the spacer pressing mechanism. Then, an adhesive is applied to the pressed spacer, the spacer to which the adhesive was applied is vacuum-dried and temporarily fixed in a vacuum drying furnace, the spacer pressing mechanism is released, the adhesive is heat hardened, and then the spacer on which the adhesive was heat hardened is really fixed to the substrate.
However, in the above-described conventional method, it is necessary, after positioning the spacer on the substrate by using the hand and before fully fixing the positioned spacer by heating, to locate the spacer pressing mechanism, perform the vacuum drying process and release the spacer pressing mechanism. For this reason, in this case, there is a problem that manufacturing efficiency is bad because the number of processes is large. In addition, there is a problem that positioning stability is bad because the spacer clamped by the hand and then transported to a certain position on the substrate has to be transferred to the pressing by the spacer pressing mechanism.